


a death wish and a dumbfuck life philosophy

by suitablyskippy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Gen, Physical Abuse, fucked up power dynamics and also fucked up everything else as well, violence as discipline, violence as education
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 15:12:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s getting no response but that dead-eyed stare and his voice rises, unintentionally. "I’m here to fight, sir! This isn’t what I’m here for - this isn’t what <i>we’re</i> here for!”</p><p>The dining hall is very still, and very quiet, and very dim in the shadows of its cool stone walls. A single long lozenge of yellowy evening light falls across the table from the window. “<i>We</i>,” echoes Levi, and it’s not till he scrapes back his chair and stands that Eren realises he’s in trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a death wish and a dumbfuck life philosophy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magnificentbastards](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificentbastards/gifts).



> _skippy: give me a fic prompt for eren_
> 
> _martha: i'm trying to think of something you could write but it keeps turning into something i would write_
> 
> _skippy: man what if i just wrote it anyway_
> 
> _skippy: THEME EXCHANGE_
> 
> and that's the reason this fic exists

Sometimes the whole squad’s still there when he gets back from washing up after the evening meal and he likes those evenings best, when conversation gets raucous and the mood in the dining hall winds up and up with stories from training years and missions past till it’s strung tight with a kind of fierce and barely-hidden mania from all the stories they’re not telling, and the anecdotes no one wants to remember, and Eren sits very straight in his chair with his fists clenched in his lap and it’s all he can do to keep still, as still as he can, instead of leaping from his chair and slamming his hands down on the solid scrubbed-raw wood of the table and _demanding_ to fight beside them, _now_ – 

– and other times he hurries up from the kitchens wiping suds from his hands onto the heavy linen of his pants and it’s like tonight: the Lance Corporal alone at the far end of the table, papers spread out before him, reading in silence. Eren hesitates in the doorway, which is arched and low and propped back with a weathered stone brick. It’s not an inviting silence. There’s not exactly much about Lance Corporal Levi that could be called inviting. 

“Sir,” says Eren, after a moment, “do I have permission to go find Hanji? Instead of sitting around in here?”

“No,” says Levi. He doesn’t look up. 

“I’d be a hell of a lot more useful out there than in _here_ , sir, no offence, but all I’m gonna do in here is stare at the walls –”

“No one here gives a shit if you’re useful,” says Levi, and when he finally looks up Eren’s set his feet apart, straightened his back, fallen to attention before he even realises he’s done it and he glowers back across the room at Levi’s dead-eyed expression. “You can sit your ass down here or you can sit it in the dungeon, but either way you’re staying put. And either way, you’re keeping your mouth shut.”

“Sir!” The salute Eren snaps is fast and precise and Levi’s gaze falls disinterestedly from him like he’s be disappointed in just how dull Eren is if he wasn’t so utterly, crushingly unsurprised by it. Eren scowls: he goes the full length of the room and draws out the chair directly opposite Levi with the most dragging screeching unbearable scrape of wood on stone, and he sits. 

Levi offers not even a wince of acknowledgement. 

There’s a glassless square of window in the far wall. Eren folds his arms and stares out through it, at the amber shadows of evening light falling across the curve of the east tower, and the wisps of cloud dragging out through the sky behind it, and he folds his arms tighter and drums his fingers down his sides, and Levi flips a paper to consult the print on its back, tracing the line of the margin with the butt of his pencil, and Eren’s jiggling his foot under the table so vigorously by the time Levi flips the paper back and slides another to the fore that his chair’s rattling on the uneven stone slabs, and he glowers out at the light shifting lower and then he glowers at Levi instead and the aggressively straight pale line of scalp where he draws his hair meticulously down into its parting and the fact he can read without mouthing along to the words, which is more than Eren can: and Eren opens his mouth to speak then shuts it, then blurts, “I don’t get why I can’t just _do_ something!” 

The quiet scrape of pencil on paper stops entirely. 

“I mean –” Levi’s not looked up, but he’s not started writing again, but he’s not looked _up_ – and Eren’s heart is hitting faster and he sits up straighter and hurries recklessly on, “– I _get_ why you want me under supervision, I’m – I _get_ those are the rules, and I’m grateful to be alive, and I know the rules are – they’re the reason no one’s put me down, and I’m _grateful_ – but, sir, all due respect, I’m a soldier of the Scouting Legion! I’m not _here_ to do nothing! Even if it’s just rubbing down the horses, or shovelling the stables, or – or checking kit, I could do that, and it’d be _way_ more useful than sitting in _here_ , sir, if you –”

“You’re not here to do nothing,” echoes Levi. 

“No, sir!”

“What are you here to do.”

“I – beg your pardon?” 

Lance Corporal Levi lays down his pencil and pushes aside his papers, and he folds his arms on the table, and he looks at Eren. It’s a look that fails to suggest he’s got even the most passing interest in anything Eren could ever possibly have to say; but Eren sets his teeth, and glowers determinedly back, and after a moment of facing down Eren’s ferocious and increasingly watery-eyed refusal to blink Levi casts his gaze wearily up to the stone ceiling, and says it again. 

“You reckon you’re not here to do nothing. What _are_ you here to do.”

“Kill titans,” says Eren, at once. “Every single last shitty one. _Exterminate_ them.” 

“You want me to dismiss you from this table and send you out alone, beyond the wall, right now, to slice up titans.”

However dark the lines beneath Levi’s eyes, he always manages to give the impression it’s Eren who’s exhausting him; and Eren bites back on the urge to offer immediate fervent agreement and instead, carefully, he says: “I want you to let me be as useful as I can be, sir, and I’m – in _my_ opinion, sir, I’m not being anything _like_ useful – just sitting around in here –” he’s getting no response but that dead-eyed stare and his voice rises, unintentionally, “– I may as well be back in the city dungeons, I may as well not _be_ in the Scouting Legion, for all the good it does to have me _cleaning_ and – and keeping the horses in fresh hay and _cooking_ – I’m here to fight, sir! _This_ –” he gestures sharply at the table, scoured clean up and down its length every morning before breakfast, by Eren, always Eren, “– isn’t what I’m here for! This isn’t what _we’re_ here for!”

The dining hall is very still, and very quiet, and very dim in the shadows of its cool stone walls. A single long lozenge of yellowy evening light falls across the table from the window. “ _We_ ,” echoes Levi, and it’s not till he scrapes back his chair and stands that Eren realises he’s in trouble. 

“Wait –” 

His boots are already rapping hard on the room’s worn-smooth swept-clear stones. “You think Commander Erwin is failing in his duties as a soldier by sending my squad here to babysit you and your whiny, ignorant opinions.”

“No, wait, sir, I didn’t –”

“You think I’m failing in my duties as a soldier by following those orders.”

“ _No_ – no, that’s not what I –”

“You think command’s dragging us along behind them while they fumble around like a blind guy looking for a pot to piss in.”

“ _No_!” says Eren, and he wants to say more but Levi – fuck, the number of people Eren elbowed out the way as a child so he could barge to the front of crowds and wave to him! – the number of times Eren bossed Mikasa and Armin into playing Scouting Legion with him as a child, so he could pretend he _was_ him – the number of hours Eren’s spent watching him in the last week just working, and cleaning, and talking to his squad and walking the castle’s long dark corridors trying desperately to work out _what he’s got_ – and just how Eren can get it, too – Lance Corporal Levi’s stopped beside Eren’s straight-backed chair and he’s looking down at him with an expression that’s chilled from cold to ice, from ice to the temperature of the water in the well, and the water in the washbucket he brings down to Eren in the frosty mornings along with the key to his dungeon chains. 

“You think command hasn’t got a fucking clue,” says Levi. “But you think you _do_.”

A single distant whoop of laughter fades in from outside. Eren works the words round in his mouth for a moment till they’re as respectful as he reckons they can be, and then he looks up at Levi and delivers them in one long rush: “All I don’t get, sir, is how humanity’s greatest soldier can stand taking orders to waste his _time_ like this!”

The elbow that drives into his throat is hard enough to choke him but it’s also hard enough to send his chair careening over backward, and the thud of his skull against the stone sends his vision black and his teeth slammed together and he tries to roll, scramble to his feet, but he’s dazed and Levi’s fast. The scuffed black sole of one boot presses down against his throat. “I wasn’t –” Eren starts, outraged, and it presses harder and he wheezes into silence. 

“Your orders this evening were to stay put and shut up,” says Levi. “You haven’t even come close to obeying them.”

A dull monotonous ringing is echoing and aching all round the inside of his skull. He’s bitten his tongue. He rasps in breaths as deep as he can and squeezes his fists tight shut and fights back, fiercely, against the urge to fight back. 

“Better,” says Levi, but he doesn’t let up. “Bless me with a commentary on every dumbass thought that’s ever run through your brain another day. Hey – you need reminding of the body counts from the last few times you tried _doing things_ , or can I just assume we’re both on the same page there?” He pauses. Eren’s too busy breathing to speak. “Great. Keep on keeping your mouth shut.”

The moment Levi steps back Eren lurches to his feet and staggers dizzily, regains his balance with his back to the wall and the room tilting, sliding, whirling a little before him. It’s darker than it was but that’s probably the sunset. He’s been concussed before: he doesn’t _feel_ concussed. On the verge of spitting blood he realises how well Levi would take that so he coughs, and swallows it back, and wipes his mouth in his coarse cotton sleeve; he presses himself up against the cold rough stone of the wall for support and gets as urgently far as: “Sir – all I’m saying is I _respect_ –” before he hears a _tch_ of exasperation and his head’s slammed back against it. 

Sunbursts flash giddily across his vision. 

“You’re a slow learner,” says Levi, and does not remove his hold from Eren’s throat. 

“ _Sir_ –”

The same heavy fast crack and for a second when his balance cuts out and the room slips wildly blurred and sideways the only thing keeping Eren upright is Levi, pushing hard into the soft underside of his jaw. “Slow learner, or you _really_ fucking like this. _Listen_ to me –”

It’s not an insult, is what Eren wants to say! – it’s a _compliment_ , it’s how much respect he’s got for him and how much he wants to know what Lance Corporal Levi knows – the five short fingers digging into his windpipe’ve got more skill in them than the whole of the Military Police, and Levi doesn’t _get_ it – doesn’t get that Eren just wants to _know_ – but as soon as Eren starts to say so those fingers dig in tighter and his head jerks back and 

smack.

“Kid, I _get_ that you’re thicker than clogged-up shit.” There’s no silence when he pauses because Eren’s breathing is coming harsh and raggedy enough it’s turned to noisy panting. Levi’s sigh is short and irritated. “If you’re trying to tell me you’re all over me, quit it. I know that. Everyone knows that. I’m the best this world’s got. _Everyone’s_ all over me.”

Eren keeps his hands uncurled and his defences down and though with his head shoved back his view is mainly of the low stone ceiling and the dim evening shadows shifting further and further across it with the sunset, he can see, if he tries, at the very edge of his vision, the dark flat gaze Levi’s got trained upward on him. 

“If you’re gonna act like humanity’s greatest soldier is such a big deal,” says Levi, “then you can shut the hell up and _listen_ to him.”

“Yessir,” says Eren, when he’s got a little of his breath back. It comes out feebler than he wanted but he doesn’t dare try again. 

The grip on his throat flexes, then loosens, then goes. A dizzy headrush of fresh cold air hits so hard his legs give way and he slumps to his knees, head still ringing, one long dull flat note. He presses his hands flat to the floor and lets the room revolve slowly, gently around him. 

“You wanna kill titans.” 

“Yessir!”

“Congratulations,” says Levi. “So do I. So does my squad. So does Hanji, when they’re not trying to get in the titans’ pants instead. So does every single soldier who’s ever pledged to the Scouting Legion, dead or alive or getting choked down some monster’s gullet right this second.” 

“Yessir,” Eren says again, smartly, and keeps his eyes down. Before him in the gathering gloom Levi’s boots are tacky with fresh bootblack. His feet are apart. He’s standing at rest. When he speaks he drops his sloppy words precisely, deliberately, the same way he does in squad meetings, chalk in hand at the blackboard in the makeshift assembly room. 

“Every single one of us signed up for the sake of humanity’s freedom, except for the occasional spoiled, noisy little brat who signed up for the sake of a death wish and a dumbfuck life philosophy. Or the occasional regrettable idiots who signed up for the sake of their unhealthy attachments to those brats.”

“Mikasa –” says Eren, but he’s bitten her name back before it’s even fully out and he barks, instead, to the cracks and chips in the stone floor between his knees: “Yessir!”

“We’re in the Scouting Legion cos it exists to kill titans. We follow orders cos we _know_ – that everything the Scouting Legion does, it’s moving toward titans with their eyes poked out and their flabby pink necks sliced wide open. We follow _orders_ ,” says Levi, again – his weight shifts and instinctively Eren tenses, braces for impact, but all Levi does is crouch, squatting back on his heels before him – “we follow our orders – cos we know dead titans are where the orders are taking us. Look at me.” 

There’s only a moment of hesitation before Eren acts but he should have known – he _does_ know, he knows better – that any hesitation at all is too much for Levi: and he’s about to raise his head when one small pale hand knots into his hair and wrenches it up for him. “I’m here mopping up after your ungrateful ass cos those are my orders, and they’ve been made with dead titans in mind. We’ll die on command, if that’s the order, cos we know sometimes the only route to dead titans involves dead soldiers.” 

“Yessir!” says Eren, with his gaze focused ferociously right through him to the furthest wall; and Levi twists his grip and says, “ _Look_ at me,” so Eren reels his gaze back in, with all the half-dazed dignity he can scrape together through the ache in his head and the pain in his scalp and the fact his hair’s plastered itself damply down to his skin with what might be sweat or might be blood: and he looks at Levi. 

It’s been a long time since anyone but Mikasa could return his eye contact for longer than a moment without dropping it and wincing but Levi’s doing it: narrowed and critical, nearly colourlessly dark and sharp enough to vivisect. “To suggest that ‘following orders’ and ‘acting usefully in the interests of humanity’ are separate things – it’s an insult to the memory of every soldier who’s died in service to the Scouting Legion.” 

“Yessir,” says Eren, and Levi lets him go, and stands. 

“Tell me what that means.”

“It means,” says Eren, and stares down at his hands in furious concentration, “it, uh – what it means is –” realisation breaks bright and sudden like sunrise over Wall Maria, he scrambles to his feet, he swipes back his sticky hair from his eyes “– it means there’s – there are probably gonna be titans round here we can kill at _some_ point, sir – _that’s_ what it means!” 

Levi’s frowns are capable of shading through an infinite variety of displeasures but the one he raises now, up from the tatty collar of Eren’s shirt to fix on Eren, is purest incredulity. “I’d say you’re unbelievable,” he says, “but you’re nauseatingly plausible. Tell me what _else_ it means.”

“Uh,” says Eren, and thinks, feverishly fast, “uh, it means – that you’re not wasting your time here? With the squad? And me? Because it’s – the order to do that is probably to make sure we get more dead titans, just – later, and not right now?”

“Correct,” says Levi. By the time it occurs to Eren that his final physical exams before graduation were about entirely as painful as this – and by the time it occurs to him that they were watched by sergeants with about entirely the same intense evaluation as this – by then, Levi is crossing back around the table to the dull echo of boots on stone, carefully smoothing down the barely-rumpled collar of his shirt, the barely-rumpled ruffle of his cravat. “It also means that when I tell you to sit still and shut up –”

“– I do it!” interrupts Eren, and for good measure he adds: “Sir!” and snaps a salute so fast another shallow wave of dizziness sluices by him. 

“Correct,” says Levi. He’s shuffling the papers laid neatly out before his chair back into order, pants still immaculately white below his harness in the dim and faded twilight. Eren rubs the tender patch at the back of his skull and watches, and waits, till he realises his vague nausea is a result of rubbing that tender patch so he pushes his hands down into his pockets instead, and continues to watch, and continues to wait. “You’re staring at me, kid.”

“Yessir,” says Eren. “Do I – if you’re leaving, do I have to go to the dungeon now?”

Levi snaps a clip to the papers, tucks them into his elbow, turns to leave. “What you gotta know is this,” he says, and as soon as Eren realises he’s still being addressed he hurries after him, soft leather shoes quiet beside the rapid rat-a-tat of Levi’s. “You think I’m such a big deal that my shit don’t stink, but you’re wrong about that.”

“Right,” says Eren, after a moment. 

“It stinks just as gross as yours does.”

“Right,” says Eren, again. The passage outside the dining hall is torchlit, flickering warm orange shadows on the ceiling. “Right. Okay.”

“The only difference is _I_ actually clean the fucking _latrine_ round after.”

“Right,” says Eren, “okay, but – no offence, sir, but I just wanna know if I’ve got to go get Petra to lock me in now. In the dungeon. For the rest of the night.”

The energetic racket Hanji’s kicking up from the sleeping quarters echoes from the staircase, their voice weird and hollow as it bounces down to them off and off the stone walls. Levi stops and turns round so Eren stops too, abruptly, wary, closing his fists tight – just in case – but all Levi does is level him that flat unreadable stare. “Eren.”

“Yessir!”

“I’m trying to communicate to you the fact I’m willing to grant you a little freedom tonight.”

“You are?” says Eren, and the bones of his wrists feel immediately lighter at the thought they’re not gonna be chained down in heavy cold steel within the next ten minutes. “You are? – for _real_ , sir?”

“Freedom in the form of cleaning out every single toilet in this place. I dunno how fucking dense you are not to cotton to the fact immediately but Jesus, _Jesus_ – grab a scrubbing brush and get to it, kid.”

“Huh?” 

Levi rubs one hand up the smooth and close-cut hair at the back of his skull: and turns, and sighs, and does not respond, and keeps walking. 

“Wait,” says Eren, and hurries after him, “sir, wait, the toilets are – they’re gross. Sir! They’re really unpleasant, all respect to Auruo but he never changes the paper, or – he doesn’t even _try_ to keep them clean – I mean, whatever you want, sir! But that’s _seriously_ not –”

“Eren,” says Levi. He’s at the foot of the narrow winding stone staircase, up to the sleeping quarters for those who aren’t half-human monsters in need of nighttime incarceration and restraint. He steps to the first step. It brings him to Eren’s eye-level and Eren stares stubbornly back. “You said you want to be useful.”

“Sir, yes _sir_!”

“Sometimes useful is gutting titans. Sometimes useful is wiping down Auruo’s nasty-ass skidmarks. Tell me, what did you just offer me.”

It’s an effort, but Eren drags the slouch of his shoulders up to the same determinedly straight line they were before, shoved back and resolute below his baggy brown rough-woven shirt. “Whatever you want, sir!”

“Right,” says Levi. “Whatever I want. Get to it.”


End file.
